Mauricia Baca - An Empathetic Approach to Nevada's Conservation Challenges

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Mauricia Baca is the State Director of the Nevada Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. In this role, she leads TNC’s efforts in Nevada across a wide range of conservation issues that are familiar to Mountain & Prairie listeners– the Colorado River, the Sagebrush Sea, and renewable energy. But Nevada is also home to some very unique conservation challenges related to biodiversity, mining for rare earth metals, groundwater for agriculture, and more. So I was excited to have this opportunity to learn from Mauricia about some of the specific challenges facing Nevada, TNC’s solutions to these challenges, and how the lessons learned can be applied in other regions of the West.

Mauricia was born in Mexico, grew up in New York City, and credits much of her love of nature and the environment to her childhood experiences exploring Central Park. After college, she served in the Peace Corps, worked as a community organizer in New York, and eventually attended law school. After four years of working as a prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, she moved to Nevada and began her first position with The Nature Conservancy, leading conservation work on the Truckee River. She has served as the State Director since November 2020, and, as you’ll hear, all of her efforts are infused with a deep level of compassion, empathy, and gratitude.

Mauricia has such a fascinating personal and professional trajectory, and there are many lessons to be learned from both her approach to her life and career, and the specifics of TNC’s critical work in Nevada. We talked about her youth in Mexico and New York City, and how she has been committed to environmental work since she was a very young girl. We discuss her stint in the Peace Corps and how those experiences laid the groundwork for her current work with TNC. She shares some insights from switching from the litigation world to the conservation world, and she offers some wisdom for folks looking to make a similar transition. We discuss lithium mining, groundwater conservation, and climate change, and how TNC is making strides to protect biodiversity while balancing society's growing need for rare earth metals, water, and development. She also shares some wisdom gleaned from her recent battle with breast cancer, and discusses how her approach to work has changed since that life-altering health scare.

A big thanks to Mauricia for being so open and thoughtful, and for sharing so many wonderful insights from her inspiring career. Be sure to check out the episode notes for links to everything we discussed and to watch Mauricia's recent TEDx talk, which serves as a great companion to this interview. Enjoy!

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Mauricia Baca
The Nature Conservancy in Nevada
Mauricia’s TEDx talk
Full episode notes and links: https://mountainandprairie.com/mauricia-baca/

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This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Colorado chapter of The Nature Conservancy and TNC chapters throughout the Western United States. Guided by science and grounded by decades of collaborative partnerships, The Nature Conservancy has a long-standing legacy of achieving lasting results to create a world where nature and people thrive.

On the last Tuesday of every month throughout 2024, Mountain & Prairie will be delving into conversations with a wide range of The Nature Conservancy’s leaders, partners, collaborators, and stakeholders, highlighting the myriad of conservation challenges, opportunities, and solutions here in the American West and beyond.

To learn more about The Nature Conservancy’s impactful work in the West and around the world, visit www.nature.org

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TOPICS DISCUSSED:

4:00 - Mauricia’s upbringing and early years in Mexico and New York City
7:00 - When she knew she wanted to devote her career to environmental work
9:15 - Legal training as thought training
11:45 - How the Peace Corps and other experiences helped her learn to build trust and relationships
16:45 - When TNC entered Mauricia’s life as a next career step
19:45 - More details on how she was able to land her first job with TNC
24:00 - Career evolution within TNC
26:00 - Starting as TNC State Director at the beginning of the pandemic
28:45 - Tackling climate-related challenges in Nevada and beyond
34:00 - The Atwood Preserve and the quiet beauty of the Mojave Desert
39:00 - TNC’s work to preserve biodiversity in the face of lithium mining
43:45 - The importance of groundwater for Nevada’s ag sector
49:00 - Working in partnership with Tribal communities
54:00 - Thinking locally and acting globally
56:00 - Lessons learned from Mauricia’s recent cancer scare
1:03:30 - Favorite books
1:06:00 - Parting words of wisdom

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